Another Election Day

[selenite0]

I started crying yesterday as I saw the news coming in from Iraq (and scared the heck out of celticdragonfly until I got "Good news" through my choked throat). It's the pictures of the Iraqis who voted that got to me. These people know that Zarqawi proclaimed that anyone participating in the election was an apostate and marked for death. But they're not just voting, they're letting their pictures be taken so the whole world can see they voted, daring the enemy to come get them. I think these people aren't going to be satisfied with just voting once. My optimism about the future of the experiment feels a lot more justified now.

I'm still not as optimistic as Robert Wright's latest piece in the NYT. He's convinced me that the forces of history favor freedom, but it's not going to happen if we sit back and wait for history to bring it to us on a platter. It takes lots of hard work to create freedom, lots more than creating a slight-improved dictatorship. History supports that by giving big rewards to free people. But that doesn't make the first step any easier. It takes hard decisions, hard work, and a willingness to take great risks. As those voters did.

Comments

[firedrake-mor.livejournal.com]

I confess I got a little annoyed with John Kerry, who was warning people not to put too much stock in this election, because it wasn't representative of the whole nation. I felt he was saying it just to make the President look bad, which struck me as rather poor sportsmanship. Frankly if the Sunnis choose not to vote, and they didn't, because of 50 years of running roughshod over everyone else makes them feel like they're now not being represented, that's their freaking problem.

As much as I do not like Mr. Bush, I have to admit this came off better than I expected, and much credit goes to the team implementing the elections and the American soldiers trying desperately to put down the insurgents with too few men and too little equipment. I still feel that the Bush Administration lied to get us into Iraq, but I have to admit that yesterday's voting made me feel a little better about it.

The start of a way out

[abovenyquist.livejournal.com]

> I still feel that the Bush Administration lied to get us into Iraq, but I have to admit that yesterday's voting
> made me feel a little better about it.

I don't think they ever deliberately lied, per se; I think the Administration told what they believed to be true. They were just misguided; if anything, they lied to themselves. Read Bob Woodward's "Plan of Attack" for a pretty reasonable picture of how that probably came to be.

What is absolutely marvelous about the elections is it is a first step towards us going home, and there will not be peace in Iraq until we do. I thought the day was going to be much bloodier that it was, and it must have deflated at least one component of the insurgency, the foreign component. The local Iraqi component, mostly, just wants us gone. Deflating the foreign component is important since that's where a lot of the $$$ is coming from.

There needs to be an election for a national leader - and that leader can't be Allawi. It needs to be someone without too extensive ties to the U.S., or the interim Iraqi government that's often just seen as a tool of the U.S. occupaion. It doesn't matter one whit if a given segment (Sunnis, whoever) decide not to vote. It wouldn't even matter if only 10% of the towns vote. All it needs to be is a reasonable election-like thing, with a reasonable claim at legitimacy, where someone who is truly popular with the Iraqi people takes the helm. That person will need be be tough. They will need to have read their Machiavelli. They will need to have the strength to prevent, or weather, the civil war that may break out when we do leave.

And then that newly elected person will need to ask us, ever so politely, to go home.

It's the only way out that I can see that doesn't lead to either (a) civil war, or (b) us being there essentially forever and bleeding the U.S. eternally.

I hope such a person exists... Iraq, where is your George Washington? Where is your Thomas Jefferson?
The U.S. need you; Iraq needs you; The world needs you; whoever, wherever you are.

Hmmm, can we avoid civil war?

[abovenyquist.livejournal.com]

Pat Buchanan is a nutcase, but his writings on Iraq have usually been on target, and one article leads me to revise a statement in my previous post, and that is the question of how much of the insurgency is Annoyed Iraqis, how much of it is Foreign Jihadists, and how much of it is Bitter Sunnis. He argues that the final test for democracy in Iraq will not be General Insurgents vs. U.S., but Sunni vs. Shiite, with the Shiites on the side of democracy. Our presence is necessary now to keep the Sunnis from taking control.

http://www.theamericancause.org/a-pjb-050203-sunni.htm

There's a lot more Shiites, and a lot lot more if you count Shiites+Kurds, so the side of democracy would eventually win. But it will be horribly pleasant to watch.

Aaack! Aaack! Karl, do you see a way out of a civil war?

The U.S. wound up fighting its own horrible civil war to sort out what it wanted to be. It may be inevitable that Iraq will to...

Re: Hmmm, can we avoid civil war?

[selenite.livejournal.com]

A civil war would be different from what's going on now how? Kurds and Shiites attacking Sunni towns? Check out the composition of the Iraqi units who participated in the attack on Fallujah. Attacks on Sunni women and children? If Zarqawi hasn't managed to provoke that so far I can't see it being likely. An attempt at secession by the Sunnis? They're outnumbered 4:1. Not that they'd want to leave all the oil behind anyway. A mass Sunni uprising? That would be giving the Americans targets they can hit, and everyone there knows it.

There is an open question of whether the Shiites will have the will to fight effectively (the Kurds certainly do). I'm betting they will, it's just a long slog to build a useful force from scratch.

As for Buchanan--I find him a good reference point. Mostly likely if he believes it, it's wrong. I seriously rethought voting for Bush when I found out that's what he was going to do.

Re: The start of a way out

[selenite.livejournal.com]

The local Iraqi component, mostly, just wants us gone.

Well, no. That component wants to be back in charge, the way they used to be. The election just showed that they're a minority and the majority is willing to stand up to them. It's a massive blow to them. The foreigners view killing Americans and non-Wahabis as an end in itself, so they don't care about it.

us being there essentially forever and bleeding the U.S. eternally.

We've had troops in Germany and Japan for sixty years. I think the expense has been worth it. We'll probably keep some troops in Iraq at their request. One heavy division should suffice to keep Syria and Iran from any plundering expeditions. It'll also convince anyone unhappy with his career progress under democracy that pulling out his guns won't improve things.

The key to stopping our bleeding is 1. knocking off the toughest enemy units and 2. getting the Iraqi forces up to handling routine security. We're making progress on both. A lot of the election security was handled by Iraqis (including one policeman who stopped a suicide bomber by tackling him). More troops are getting training, and the trained ones are getting experience. The sign of victory will be a province being handled entirely by Iraqis, and the Americans concentrating into the remaining hot spots. Eventually there'll be a small force doing joint operations in one province (Al-Anbar, most likely) and they'll quietly run a last joint patrol and the Americans will sit in their bases doing training exercises. That doesn't make them totally safe from getting shot at--but jfoxdavis can tell you that the troops in Germany weren't either.

I'll find out about it from a military blog, as all the major media will be talking about the latest celebrity on trial and not mentioning Iraq.

pictures of Iraqi voters

[jenna-thorn.livejournal.com]

I will confess to getting a little choked up this morning myself. The cover of the DMN's Quick has, front and center, a woman flashing the v-for-victory, with her scarf over her head and a tight lipped smile.

That's one beautiful woman -- refusing to bow, with her uncovered face and her inkstained finger looking directly into the eyes of the West.

Damn.

"street cred"

[btripp.livejournal.com]

"Zarqawi proclaimed that anyone participating in the election was an apostate and marked for death"

You know, this reminds me of something that I was thinking yesterday ... I wonder how much the "Arab Street" is like the "urban street" in terms of "street cred". Zarqawi and the like have been "promising" big things and delivering zilch. What happened during the voting? I wasn't exactly keeping a tote board, but I seem to recall there being 8 suicide bombs and a few mortar attacks, with something like 24 casualties all told. Not to belittle 24 deaths, but that's not much different from any other day in Iraq, if memory serves.

Heck, we even got the guys who fired that rocket into the Embassy ... bet they were surprised when the Rangers kicked down their door!

At what point do guys like Zarqawi become a joke to the other over-excitable diaper-brains? He promised that "the streets would flow with blood", but only manged to sucker less than a dozen imported "martyrs" into blasting themselves to bits (and at that, mainly outside of the security perimeters!). What's the Islamic version of "all hat, no cattle" ... "all blab, no boom"? At what point does Uncle Osama & co. stop writing checks to fund The Jihadis That Couldn't Shoot Straight?

I think there should be a psyops campaign of publicly mocking these losers, as I bet they'd hate that even worse than being forced to eat pineapple-ham pizza while watching Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS!


(http://www.btripp.com)

Re: "street cred"

[archangelbeth]

Yeah, I was thinking something along those lines myself. I think he's in a too target-rich environment now. How many people voted? And got away with it?

As to Robert Wright's argument....

[amalque.livejournal.com]

....he has some good points, but I'm always a little dubious of claims that some ideology/economic system has "the force of history" on its side.....YMMV, of course.

And as to the elections, I can only say: Wow.

[carbonelle.livejournal.com]

Have you seen this montage. The final scenes of the voters themselves--! Wow.